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Review: Raul Lovisoni and Francesco Messina's seminal LP from 1979 Prati Bagnati Del Monte Analogo not only introduced the world to the work of two gifted composers, but is also notable for being produced by electronic pioneer Franco Battiato. Both central figures within the Italian avant-garde, they were part of a generation of artists who contributed to a radical rethinking of musical practices and composition. They reveal Minimalism as it's rarely known: with delicate melodies, subtle harmonic interplay and incorporating diverse creative traditions - slowly giving way to an ever-expanding open space. Skirting the outer edges of ambient, new age and experimental music, the LP has a transformative beauty unlike anything else.

Review: Emotional Response present something intriguing and oh so fresh from Cherrystones, who has most commonly been spotted recently lurking about labels like Bahnsteig 23, but in fact has a legacy reaching back to the late 90s. This new mini-album is reportedly the result of a pointed retreat to Scotland - a period of semi-isolation with minimal distractions from the serious business of analogue synths and reel-to-reel tape. There's a lot going on, from the slinky, boogie-licked groove of 'Amaziac' to the sludgy, wave tinted 'Rave Digger', but throughout the common theme is one of rough, upfront waveforms - maximal sounds with lashings of character, wielded with glee by an artist knee deep in their craft.

Review: A new album from Sam Shepherd AKA Floating Points is always cause for celebration, but even by his standards "Crush" is rather special. Largely eschewing the ambient jazz soundscape shuffle of 2017's "Reflections - Mojave Desert", it sees the Shepherd showcase his musical dexterity in stunning fashion via cuts that wrap shimmering neo-classical strings around what sound like modular electronics and rhythms that variously touch on broken beat, off-kilter experimental D&B and Autechre-style IDM. Of course there are ambient and experimental soundscapes showcased, but it's the fact that the album contains a swathe of formidably dancefloor-focused cuts in the style that first made him standout that pleases us most. Highlights include recent single "LesAlpx", the dreamy "Anasickmodular" and the "People's Potential" style deep house intricacy of "Last Bloom".

Review: Having taken time out to travel the world and experience new things (including psychedelic substances in California), John Hopkins planned to make Singularity, his ninth album, "a sonic ecosystem that starts and ends on the same note". He soon got frustrated by these limitations, so instead just laid down a fluid and hazy album that combines his usual luscious, ambient electronics with a variety of sparse, heavy and off-kilter rhythms. While undeniably laidback in parts, the album also boasts a number of foreboding techno workouts and uses a wider palette of instrumental sounds than we've come to expect (including some fine strings and his own intricate piano playing). The resultant set is rather impressive, all told, and while not quite a "sonic ecosystem", it's certainly an enjoyable journey.

Review: James Blake's debut album is undoubtedly one of 2011's most keenly awaited releases, and its arrival via his own (major label funded) Atlas imprint ensures their is no lull in momentum for a producer who enjoyed a watershed 2010 with releases on Hessle Audio and R&S. The results here differ wildly from his previous sonic excursions - gone are the shimmering R&B soaked melodies of "CMYK" and the sheer experimentalism of the Klavierwerke EP, which saw the young Londoner depart from the confines of the dancefloor and enter a realm where there was only a passing reference to rhythm-based music. Instead we are treated to Blake's own yearning, raw voice, delicate pianos and an underlying sense of melancholy. Ubiquitous single "Limit To Your love" and the crackly sonic terrain evoked on "The Wilhelm Scream" are among the most immediately pleasing moments, but there is much to explore here. It's a fascinating opus and surely the catalyst to a long and fruitful career at the top.

Review: Moderat performed what they knew would be one of their last concerts in 2017 - at least, for a while, anyway. Having been in need for a hiatus, COVID restrictions kicked in and the pressure to juggle performing and music-making was off. Thus came 'MORE D4TA', an album that strove after connection and collaboration in an era where the potential for such was stunted. Now finally finished and polished, the album comes for all to enjoy, demonstrating some of the duo's most focused and pop-structured production and modular chops.

Review: You'll probably already be acquainted with the name Manuel Gottsching - and you should be - but just in case you aren't, he was a pillar of Ash Ra Tempel's golden years and, among other of his contemporaries, was a pioneer of the genre that is often dubbed 'new age'. E2-E4 was a 1984 solo album from the man, and is certainly up there with the likes of Steve Reich's best minimal material, although it has often gone relatively unnoticed. MG Art from Germany have done us the favour of reissuing this monumental release, and we're utterly awestruck by how contemporary and fresh this album still is. In fact, one could say that a tune like "31'38" is the basis for the sound championed by new labels like Mood Hut, where a significantly danceable beat is laid above placid, warm harmonics. Similarly, "23'00" is just as balearic and phased out but, once again, we just can't believe how great this music still sounds more than thirty years later. Warmly recommended.

Review: Burial's first full-length EP since 2012's 'Rival Dealer' hears the South London enigma plunge the depths of his newest dark ambient sound, wrenching the emo essences of rave from their breakbeats to produce a purely ambient affair. Spanning every emotion from depression to triumph, 'Antidawn' opens with a cough, in a seeming nod to the COVID lockdowns of recent years. Meanwhile, disparate sections buzz and weave in and out of one another on 'Shadow Paradise' and 'Strange Neighbourhood', never quite landing on their feet before being whisked away again. One of Burial's most defining world-building works.

Review: Italian composer and modular synth wizard Caterina Barbieri makes a debut on the Light-Years label here with a profound work of ambient beauty. Known for her musical vortexes, she warps space and time with her compositions and has done ever since breaking through with 2017's double-album Patterns Of Consciousness. Spirit Exit again finds her start up her modal rug and get to work in her home studio amidst Milan's two-month pandemic lockdown in 2020. It's a personal work that "takes inspiration from female philosophers, mystics and poets spread across time." The transportational sounds are as complex as they are emotive from front to back.

Review: Regis and Female's Againstnature album from 2000 gets the full reissue treatment here by Berlin label, Tresor. Released under their given names Karl O'Connor and Peter Sutton, the record is a noted zenith of the Birmingham techno scene of the era. It has had a major influence on the music that was released in the years after and has here been remastered for a fresh double vinyl pack. As well as the original sounds, there is also 'Theme From Streetwalke,' a track that was previously released on a Tresor compilation. The tracks are heavy but relatively stripped back. They're packed with texture and atmosphere and never less than hugely compelling.

Review: Martin Jenkins aka Pye Corner Audio has been a busy man. He ended a fine trio of albums last year with Entangled Routes, then dropped a live album on this label early in the year, and now quickly follows it up with yet another fine long player. Ride guitarist Andy Bell plays on five of the tunes and is a collection that comes heated by plenty of sun and coloured with bright acid psychedelics. Says the man himself, "I try to tailor my work slightly differently for the various labels that I work with, and this seems to fit nicely with Sonic Cathedral's ethos." He has sure done that.

Review: Platform 23's latest release sees them offer up a partial reissue of 'Music For Hippies', an impossible-to-find 1988 cassette from Dutch experimentalists De Febriek. What's an offer is a mix of original tracks and fresh remixes. In the former category you'll find 'Lullabye', a spacey, dubbed-out chunk of new wave/post-punk/cosmic funk fusion full of intergalactic synth sounds, rubbery bass, bluesy guitar solos and trippy vocals, and an edited version of the epic 'Come Down', a more atmospheric, but no less dubbed-out affair that combines layered ambient noise, rocket-launch sonics and a hushed, hypnotic groove. Bahnstag 23 contributor Dunkeltier provides two takes on 'Lullabye', a throbbing, druggy new wave mix and a total re-make. Completing the package is a fiendishly low-slung, dark and mind-altering '5am Mix' of 'Come Down' courtesy of Khidja.

Review: Kraftwerk's 1975 performance at Fairfield Hall in Croydon is the stuff of legend. Finally it is available as a high quality audio pressing that allows you to relive all its glorious futurism. The show was broadcast on radio as part of a short tour of the UK that came after the release of the German computer music pioneer's hugely popular Autobahn. It features tracks from that album as well as 'Die Sonne, Der Mond, Die Sterne' and 'Showroom Dummies.' A real piece of electronic music history that will spice up any collection.

Review: 0 is back on their own 0 label with 02, a second offering of experimental electronic music. Both sides of this 12" are taken up by one long and winding track each. The first is all dubbed out, with gassy sounds bringing a little light and sharpness to the murky pads, grainy effects and lo-fi aesthetic all around. It's a heady back room cut for in-the-know crowds at 5AM. The flip side is a little fuller, with skittish rhythms, busted sine waves and watery synths all coalescing around a haunting groove that is awash with real-world noise.

Review: Prism brings the number of Orb albums to 18 and now in their fourth signnificant phase as a line up - Alex Paterson joined by Michael Rendell, replacing long term Thomas Fehlmann - released by electronic music duo The Orb into at least the high twenties. In this time, the pair have achieved cosmos-wandering musical mastery, expanding their usual dance music horizons into even further-flung territories like synthpop and non-dub reggae, tempering it all into a unified, fantastical sound. Only nine tracks convey The Orb's latest sonic imaginings, with the phase-swirly, wah-infected 'Why Can't You Be In Two Places At Once' and the future-reggae cut 'Dragon of the Ocean' standing out as highlights. Of course, it wouldn't be the same without The Orb's usual indulgence in collaboration, this one sporting appearances from Gaudi, Youth, David Harrow and violinist Violeta Vicci. .

Review: A fantastic introduction to a Japanese electronic artist who has simultaneously influenced many while flying well under the radar, Gaia: Selected Ambient & Downtempo Works presents a deep dive into the world of Dream Dolphin, a producer who began releasing music under this moniker at the age of 16 and was brought up on classic Italian songs before discovering the likes of PIL, Yellow Magic Orchestra and The KLF. Amazingly, even thought there's a good chance you'd never heard of her before now, Dream Dolphin, also known as Noriko, released a staggering 20 albums in just eight years, and 18 of the tracks from that catalogue are here now. The vast majority never available on vinyl before, they span IDM, ambient, downbeat, trance, organic experimental and more, making this a real trove.

Review: A collaborative new single by sampletronic master Kieran Hebden (aka. Four Tet) and guitarist and composer William Tyler, two acclaimed musicians and both longstanding friends. Part of a recent spewing-forth of Hebden-adjacent material to hit the shelves after the artist's oft-reported-upon "agent of chaos" phase, these two tracks, pressed to a furtive 12", provide a neat counterpoint to that assessment. Rather than a pair of riddim bangers, the record flaunts Hebden's signature electronic textures and Tyler's guitar into a hypnotic, nominally dark soundwhirl, reminiscent of the earliest days of Text, but with a unique edge - a sonic corner never quite scoured before by either artist.

Review: Heavyweight heroes Kode9 and Burial are no stranger to working together having done so to great success on FABRICLIVE 100 back in 2018. They don't actually collaborate on this one, though, instead serving up one side each of a new 12" for Fabric. As experimental artists with a penchant for drawn from the UK hardcore continuum you roughly know what to expect - fresh rhythms, emotive sounds designs, compelling rhythms. The 140g 12" comes in both limited edition and standard black vinyl versions, and both have bespoke 3D design with the fabric logo printed on reverse board heavyweight card.

Review: Way back in 1995, the late Susuma Yokota joined forces with Ray Castle, an Australian producer then based in Japan, for an album of 'tribal-ritual ambient' tracks as Mantaray. For whatever reason, the trippy, partially mixed patchwork of effects-laden percussion, mind-altering electronics, dreamy chords and mind-altering vocal samples was not released on vinyl first time round - hence this edition from archival release specialists Transmigration. It's a genuinely unique album that's alternately becalmed and unsettling, offering a psychedelic drift through hallucinatory, dawn-ready soundscapes that features plenty of subtle nods towards Japanese and Indigenous Australian musical culture. It's basically a slept-on 90s ambient classic, so this vinyl reissue is well worth picking up.

Review: Zach Murray is a fast-rising London producer who makes a great impression here with an ambitious and ultimately accomplished double pack on Oscuro. The title track 'Pieces Of The Puzzle' opens with sweeping ambient before 'Chill Pill' explores as glistening melodic world of futuristic tech and 'Can't Stop The Rain' has an old-school energy to its marching drums and rave stabs. There are also forays into acidic electro like on 'Keep Chasin'' and rugged breaks on 'Phase Me', elastic house sounds on 'Dubmotions' and cosmic turbulence in the trippy 'Dreams,' all of which show off this producer's versatility in style.

Review: Chocolate Hills is a duo made up of Paul Conboy and Alex Paterson, Orb founder and Orbscure Records boss. Their excellent Yarns From The Chocolate Triangle is one of those albums that is tailored made for listening to on good quality headphones, a lush and world class ambient soundscape with vivid designs and bright colours all in high definition. It draws on library music, exotica, kitsch, Balearic, downtempo, folk, spaced out pop and even d&b, all loosely based on an imagined nautical journey to the Bermuda triangle and back. All is calm at sea as you bob and drift on these roomy and magnificently realised sounds, mixing organic and electronic sources and taking a more gorgeosuly idiosyncratic route than the latest Orb album.

Review: Darren Cunningham continues his inimitable exploration as Actress with a new album reportedly informed by game theory. Drawing on the tactics of chess as a framework for creating and releasing his ninth studio album, the artist himself describes this as a 'voyage into luxury sonics', and indeed 'Push Power (a 1)' has a certain languid piano jazz sophistication to it. But there's still plenty of that rugged, off-centre groove beating away underneath, and in its subdued and singular style, it feels like an Actress record through and through. Profound, moving and bold in its originality, this is yet another triumph for an artist who constantly shakes up the conventions of club music.

Review: David Holmes' first solo album since 2008's The Holy Pictures, Blind On A Galloping Horse now comes to Heavenly Recordings. A politically-charged LP full of sonic interrogations of political disaster and turmoil, Holmes here joins the cast of artists using their art to provide solace to music fans suffering at the hands of the Uncertainocene. With updated versions of the previously released singles 'Hope Is The Last Thing To Die' and 'It's Over If We Run Out Of Love', as well as a recording of an unreleased song by Holmes' late friend Andrew Weatherall, we're reminded of conflict, migration and othering, as all manner of voices combine to form a diverse but unified whole against a backdrop of leftfield post-punk - be they the spoken word accounts from Afghan and Ukrainian refugees now welcomed as residents in Belfast, or the French and Irish observers of the UK's turmoil of recent years.

Review: 21 years since its release and a good 15 years after its last vinyl repress, Tri Repetae's new vinyl revitalization is incredibly welcome news to fans old and new. Without wanting to preach to the choir but everything about this body of work remains ahead of its time and on its own. From those opening robotic purrs and mechanical breaks to those final tubular space echoes on "Rsdio", the whole album still sucks you in with such alien, otherworldly allure. How they made those sounds and arranged them in such a way with the technology at the time blew minds back then and blows even more in hindsight. A serious document.

Review: Warp continues to comb back through the landmark Artificial Intelligence series with this landmark record from Jochem Paap, aka Speedy J. Alongside a tandem reissue of Richie Hawtin's F.U.S.E. album Dimension Intrusion, this remastered edition of Ginger takes us back into the heart of early 90s techno innovation, when new ideas were developing globally at a rate of knots. Paap had already established himself in the harder end of the techno pool, but Ginger flipped the script with an immersive, meditative exploration of minimalism and melodic structure. Amongst the eternal classics are some dazzling miniatures deemed 'Fills' which make for some of the most compelling listening on this seminal slice of early 90s techno.

Review: Unusually, Optimo's JD Twitch and Jonny Wilkes have taken the unusual step of not announcing the tracklist for their two-part 25th anniversary compilation ahead of release. Ordering, then, requires a leap of faith, but given the sheer breadth, diversity and quality of the music they've been playing over the last quarter of a decade, there's no doubt we're in safe hands. It's not a 'best of Optimo anthems' collection, or merely a bunch of peak-time favourites; instead, we're promised a mixture of unusual warm-up favourites and confirmed dancefloor workouts in a wide range of style that have long been favourites of the two Glasgow-based DJs - many of which will, inevitably, be slept-on, forgotten or under-appreciated gems.

Review: Optimo's JD Twitch and Jonny Wilkes, undoubtedly the UK's most fearless and on-point 'anything goes' DJs, have spent a quarter of a decade building trust with their audience. You can never tell what they might play when you turn up at one of their events, but you know it will be inspired, high-quality, and most likely make you want to dance. With their two-part 25th anniversary compilation (this is part two), they've taken a similar approach, keeping the track-list under wraps until release day while promising a mix of oddball warm-up favourites and floor-focused tracks they love and have played at various points since the start of the century. Given their track record, we can expect forgotten gems, left-of-centre anti-anthems, and unusual party-starting delights.

Review: Shackleton makes music like no other - tightly intertwined experiential rhythms that often have dark, gothic, underworld and ancient ritualistic overtones. He's made records alone and in collab with the likes of Ricardo Villalobos and, earlier this year, Scotch Rolex. Now he's back on his own Woe To The Septic Heart label with The Scandal Of Time, a first long player since 2021's Departing Like Rivers. Anna Gerth features on some of the cuts and Shackleton says this will be his last for a while. It's dubby, lo-fi, drone-y and full of shadows. See 'Faraway Flowers' for intense industrial ambient, or 'Abend Wird Es Wieder' for more hallucinatory and suspensory sounds.

Review: Lee Gamble is an artist who excels in delivering post-modern music with a strong sense of sentiment and history. Just look at his breakthrough Diversions 1994-1996, in which the ambient threads in first wave jungle were blown out into grandiose chasms of sound. On this latest album, he's taking a similar approach to source material, but this time the focus is on pop earworms in which all kinds of emotive, catchy sonics get dissolved and reformed into vast, unpredictable shapes. Vitally, the emotional dimension is maintained no matter how unrecognisable the original samples are, as Gamble continues his fascinating path forwards and backwards through time.

Review: There isn't a more hit-packed Kraftwerk album than The Man Machine. First released in 1978 and here reissued on red vinyl accompanied by a fresh booklet of vintage images, the album boasts some of the German band's best loved songs, including 'The Robots', cheery sing-along 'The Model', the staggeringly good 'Neon Lights', and the bubbly title track. It shows how good the album is that such gems as 'Metropolis' and the picturesque 'Spacelab' - cuts that most other bands would kill to be able to write - tend to be ignored or overlooked. If you love electronic music, you need a copy of The Man Machine in your collection.

Review: Jamtland-born and Malmo-based producer and musician Linus Jonsson, known as Klofink, recorded these tracks between 2021 and 2023. They manifest as immersive sonic landscapes, skillfully blending pastoral and post-industrial elements. The dubby rhythms delve into profound depths, intricate sound designs unfold, and a year's worth of seasons comes and goes within each track. Amidst these global grooves, hints of ancient instruments and clandestine dancing rituals emerge, creating a captivating sonic tapestry. We, for one, find ourselves irresistibly drawn to the rich and evocative musical journey Klofink presents, yearning for more of these mesmerizing compositions.

Review: Revered dub techno don Rod Modell has joined forces with Astral Industries label founder Ario Farahani for this brand new collaboration and stunning debut album. It was devised as an immersive fictional soundtrack and is beautifully rich with layers of FX, mystic motifs and stoner overtones that skink you in deep. Old Iranian records have been used as sample court material which lends it a real world cinematise and ancient charm with Persian sounds filtering through the hazy soundscapes. A fantastic album for mind, body and soul.

Review: Italian composer Caterina Barbieri has enjoyed a walloping career so far as a contemporary experimental electronic music composer and producer, in part thanks to her rather mind-melting explorations in computational and generative methods, which have aided her creation of icy, god-playing deconstructed 'scapes. It was hardly expected she'd stop at her Mego debut Ecstatic Computation or the more recent Spirit Exit, though, and now comes the curt six-track statement Myuthafoo. A new effort via Barbieri's own label light-years, this one was actually written at the same time as her debut, and contains an array of modular-modelled sequences in similar fashion, backed up by intensely spiritual augmentations (such as ultra-deep reverb and clever portamentos) on the production end.

Review: Berlin's Cocktail d'Amore and Tokyo's Ene Records have come together once again to present the music of Solidair. The duo of Cocktail alumni Luigi Di Venere and Jules Etienne present three tracks aimed to induce a dance floor hypnosis. Orgonite (Riding the Waves) does just that, a slow build awash in the ebb and flow of acid tinges, just enough to wet your whistle on a Saturday night. The original mix keeps the skeletal support but throws in a life preserver of 8 bit gaming synthesis. Frisky arps call and respond to each other before making way for sinewy pads to lift off. Tiger's Eye sets itself onto cruising speed incorporating elements of late 90's acid techno with the sleek and smooth clubbing aesthetics of modern day Berlin.

Review: This one has been a very long time coming indeed. Work on Hapticality began, whether Phataphysical really knew it or not, back in 2013, with tracks crafted between then and 2021. Not that you'd necessarily guess this was an eight year writing process, such is the coherency between the pieces, and the overall sense of being one complete work.

A deep dive to say the least, perhaps what's most astounding is the tangible atmosphere that each track creates individually, all of which contributes to a wider feeling. Hardly easy to achieve, die-hard fans of the ambient outfit, who claim so much more than mere reverence in the scene, will likely contest that point, and argue that they would expect nothing less from these masters of dream-like electronic adventures.

Review: Of all the artists past and present who claim to let their music do their talking for them, Burial is one of the elite band of whom this truly is the case. In fact, so reluctant is he to engage with the cult-of-personality hoopla that surrounds almost every modern producer and musician of merit, that he remains a genuine recluse; he has never appeared live, only one obliquely-angled publicity photograph is known to exist, and the number of interviews he has given can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Yet despite this, his music speaks loud and wide, and the world has been listening ever since his 'South London Boroughs' EP debut on Hyperdub in March 2005. His eponymous album, which began life as a low-key release in May 2006, is now widely regarded as the benchmark release of the ever-widening dubstep genre, picking up unanimous critical acclaim along the way, and ending the year heavily featured in many 'best of' polls. Now Burial returns with 'Untrue', a new record of weird soul music, which lovingly processes spectral female voices into vaporised R&B and smudged 2step garage. Vocal lines are blurred, smeared, pitched up pitched down and pitch bent until their content is cast adrift from their original context and they whisper their saccharin sweet nothings into the void. The album continues with the debut's crackle-drenched yearning and bustling syncopations, haunted by the ghosts of rave, but also reveals some new Burial treats with a more glowing, upbeat energy. Kicking off with the skittering 2step syncopations and vocal science of 'Archangel', 'Near Dark' and 'Ghost Hardware', before long it descends into a space of radiant divas and ambience. Where 'Burial' first was humid, suffocating and unrelentingly sad, 'Untrue' is less sunless. Many of the tracks are so sweet, they become toxic, underscored by the almost geological rumbles of growling basslines. Unlike the overpoweringly melancholic prevailing mood of before, Burial's sound is now better defined as a downcast euphoria typified by the epic, muted optimism of the album's last track 'Raver'. Forget central heating the radioactivity of this album is all that you'll need to keep you warm this winter. 'Untrue' is available as full 13 track digipack CD, including recent underground hit 'Ghost Hardware', and 9 track DJ friendly double vinyl set, from which some of the beatless pieces have been edited.

Review: The music Venezuelan artist Alejandro Ghersi makes as Arca first came to the fore via UNO, the New York label who issued a trio of compelling releases in 2012. Arca's brand of glossy, high grade beat experimentation has seen him go on to work with Kanye West and FKA Twigs as well as release on venerated US indie Hippos In Tanks. An album deal with Mute may seem unexpected yet the UK label have a long and proud tradition of challenging conventions. Entitled Xen, Mute have described the 15 track set as full of "mercurial forms, fluxing unpredictably from smooth to spiked to sweet" and you wont get much of an idea from the soundclips. If you were charmed by the FKA Twigs set this is an album that will get your serotonins bubbling.

Review: Thankfully, Richard D. James has decided to finally release at least some of the output that he's been banging on about since mid-2000s. In a number of interviews, the might Aphex Twin hinted that he has vast artilleries of tracks stacked up and unreleased, probably more on purpose than out of laziness...or maybe not. What we do know is that AFX is reborn after the string of acid 12"s released about 10 years ago on Rephlex, that saw the alias become one of the most popular of James' alter egos. Orphaned Deejay Selek is a collection of tunes that contain all of the Twin's magic and unpredictably, but that also cut straight to the point and head to the middle of the dance floor. This is banging brain dynamite coated in the man's iconic style and flair. Welcome back AFX, and many hats off to Warp for making it happen.

Review: Apart from having one of the best and most singular names in electronic dance music, The Future Sound Of London have been one of the pillars of modern UK dance music, pushing through a mixture of house, techno, and breaks since the early 1990s - and, in fact, some of their tunes like "Papua New Guinea" are still getting regular play time in clubs today. While they have released a huge amount of music over the last 25 years, they've got an equally vast amount of unreleased gold in their treasure chest, a collection of tracks that have seen the light of day thanks to the present Archived series. This week it's time for the series' eighth instalment, another twelve unmissable bundles of electronic delight. However, this is a lot more than just a compilation, and the tunes work their fine mixture of melodies, breaks and electronic beats into a sublime collection of sounds. If you're into vast and explorative music with a cutting-edge, you needn't look any further.

Review: It's been a rapid rise over the past few years for Alejandro Ghersi's Arca alias. Following some years spent as Nuuro, his current project launched with aplomb on UNO in 2012 before moving on to Hippos In Tanks, and then last year shored up at Mute with the Xen album in a demonstration of true ascendance through the leftfield ranks. Now Ghersi returns to Mute with a new album Mutant, which sees further exploration of his detailed, unusual style touching on elements of noise, bombastic ambient and neoclassical. "Soichiro" lays down wispy threads of trap in amongst dramatic stop-start dynamics while "En" flirts with lingering piano and static interference in the most artful of ways, just two examples of an album loaded with surprise and intrigue.

Review: By the time Biometry was first released in 2004, Der Zyklus has developed from an electro supergroup featuring Anthony Shakir and members of Dopplereffekt, to a solo project from Drexciya member Gerald Donald. At the time, it was hailed as one of Donald's finest moments, and 11 years on has lost none of its' ability to inspire and entertain. Now freshly re-mastered, it pops, whirrs and confuses with a claustrophobic intensity. It's notably less dancefloor-focused than much of Donald's work - a couple of frisky work-outs aside - and gains its' allure from a ghostly mix of wild electronics, melancholic melodies, fizzing textures, intergalactic ambience and off-kilter IDM. As a study in 21st century paranoia, it's unsurpassed.

Review: Given that Four Tet's recent 0181 LP was comprised of material from Kieran Hebden's archives, and last year's Pink was largely compiled of tracks from the previous 18 months of 12" releases, it seems fair to say that Beautiful Rewind is his first proper album since 2010's There Is Love In You, and as such, it arrives with some degree of expectation. The past few years have seen the producer engage increasingly with the dancefloor, and these rhythms are most definitely present across the LP, particularly in the jungle breaks of "Kool FM", pirate radio-influenced techno of "Buchla" and hesitant dubstep style rhythms of "Parallel Jalebi". For the most part however Beautiful Rewind is as varied as the likes of Rounds and There Is Love In You, with the minimalist kosmische of "Ba Teaches Yoga", analogue gurgles of "Crush" and dawn chorus sounds of closer "Your Body Feels" all as beautiful as his most enduring tracks.

Review: A cult Brazilian band at their peak in the 1980s, Finis Africae represent the pinnacle of what post punk and its experimental offshoots reached for in South America. A lot of this compilation focuses on sprawling tracks that feature distant shapeless vocals, lightly pattering percussion and languid guitar, but cuts such as "Radio Tarifa" shimmy with the upstart angles of disco-not-disco at its finest, shot through with a salsa flair. Twisting and turning from child-sung folk to industrial-tinged instrumentals, through slow-pumping indie jangle and so much more besides, you'll find yourself pleasantly surprised at many turns discovering one of the hidden gems of the other side of the world.

Review: Norwegian disco titan Prins Thomas returns to his regular stomping ground of Smalltown Supersound with this, his sixth solo studio album. Thomas is sounding as vibrant as ever, his musical ideas spilling forth in glorious arrangements of organic instrumentation and gentling bubbling electronics that melt into a mellow, groovy sonic realm. There are hazy, cosmic moments to be savoured on the likes of "Feel The Love", and more adventurous rhythmic trysts like the nagging, snaking percussive melee of "Ambitions". Thomas' studio proficiency is more than matched by his imagination and creative ambition - would you expect any less from such a titan of Scandinavian electronic music?

Review: 'Cutetronica' (for want of a better pun, perhaps) has been making recent waves in experimental electronic music circles, with artists like Boy Lucid, Toiret Status, Dialect or any other number of net-bound trailblazers building convincing, glitzy-shiny soundworlds. Mari Maurice, aka. More Eaze, is another expert in the field. Her latest eight-track LP nods to something between acoustic folk and slippery-plastic fantasy; from the off of 'Gentle Pets', it's as if a small child had gone wandering in a field and dropped their Nintendogs cartridge with such force that it caused the game's virtual universe to spill over into our world, with veritably soul-quelling results. The album errs off into darker and more emotive moments, as on 'Suped' or 'Goodnight', but this is for the most part a light-hearted yet emotionally complex LP, neither for the faint or the heavy of heart - it strikes just the right balance.

Review: Melodies International is a real favourite label here at Juno HQ, headed up famously by Floating Points and finds including Mafalda. The third volume of their Melodies record Club is as good as anything the label has put out to date: it features a trio of jazz cuts selected by the one and only Hunee. First is Digital Justice's 'Theme From "It's All Gone Pearshaped"', a 13 minute live jam packed with synth action. On the flip is a spiritual piece from harpist Dorothy Ashby and Frantz Tuernal's 'Koultans'. Says Hunee, "these three distinct pieces of music tap into different layers of my memory."

Review: As Jeff Mills returns to his third deepest obsession after 909s and UFOs, he presents an addendum to his renewed Metropolis Metropolis soundtrack which doubles down on three of the themes and gives them a different framework through the lens of a 12". This is still the more cinematic end of the Millsian spectrum, but there's some intensity which may well be of use to the more dramatic or daring techno DJ. 'The Dance Rebellion Starts' is plenty loopy and disorienting, full of interwoven, clangorous patterns which should stay nicely in time if you get them locked in the mix. 'The Other Maria' might well be the star of the show though, a nightmarish, ever-building drone piece with some half-time percussion stalking around the edges for guidance. 'Freder's Reality Switch' completes the picture with a slightly more stable synths n' strings piece, but there's still that innate sense of otherness Mills always threads into his work.

Review: Uganda keeps on giving, with the country currently at the forefront of sub-Saharan Africa's electronic underground: a fertile corner of the world in terms of emerging and established talent. Enter Hibotep, a Kampala-based rising star who was born and raised in Ethiopia but grew up in Somalia. Joining her on this EP, another one to know from the Ugandan capital, Hibo Elmi, a DJ, filmmaker, fashion designer, installation artist, rapper and studio head considered to be one of the most important female dance music makers on the continent right now. Running the gamut from 'Amber''s dark, hypnotising dub-hop moves, through 'Ebwino's sparse, weightless tones, which eventually give way to playful stepping rhythm beneath the relentless microphone skills of MC Will'stone, and 'Saffron' with its slow mo, exotic shuffle, if those responsible for this EP themselves reflect the incredible diversity of the city's scene, the sounds do the same.

Review: Given it's a reunification of latter-day UK electronic visionary Rian Treanor and decade-spanning next level imprint Planet Mu, many ears will already know what to expect from this one - a collection of tracks that are jarring, alien and wildly unorthodox, while still somehow immediately engaging rhythmically. Suffice to say, your presumptions are correct in this case.

In many ways the four tracks here are among Treanor's most accessible, although that's perhaps not saying too much. The broken, dub-techno-on-speed opener, 'Obstacle 2', manages to be frantic and deep at the same time. The glittering synth lines of 'Obstacle 3' help create a sense of rave-y invitation, despite the track itself being a staccato curveball. While the remaining two efforts are equally impressive examples of how to push sonic limits without asking too much in terms of audience endurance.

Review: Out Of Joint record shop chief 8Ball makes his debut on Bristol's Sneaker Social Club, with a brand new full length titled Eleusis. His releases on the Grade10 label (which he runs with mates in his hometown of Leicester) are a celebration of 'the afterparty and are rife in moody atmospherics and post-hardcore references.' A very diverse collection of tracks, ranging from dark ambient on 'Can't Hold On' and the near skeletal dub reductions of 'Equator' on side A, to the deconstructed techstep of 'Many Shapes' on the flip. Elsewhere, there's pure euphoria heard on the ambient hardcore of 'Planetz' and the twisted, bass-driven IDM of 'Tigers Eye'.